


song of simple truths

by pyotr



Series: assassin's creed works [1]
Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types, Assassin's Creed: Odyssey - Fandom
Genre: Drabble Collection, M/M, Tags to be added
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-03-14
Updated: 2019-08-18
Packaged: 2019-11-17 17:55:13
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 4,241
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18103511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pyotr/pseuds/pyotr
Summary: ch. 6:he didn’t like admitting that praxithea was right, because she’d end up smug and insufferable and that was something that he couldn’t weather, not in this. but it remained that she was indeedright, because he missed alexios like he’d never missed anything before, felt it like a physical ache.





	1. as a creature of the wild (alexios/lykaon)

**Author's Note:**

> collection of unrelated drabbles cross-posted from my tumblr @lykaonswolf. feel free to send me requests on either ao3 or tumblr

“come with me this time,” alexios says, not quite begging, “come with me to sea.”

alexios had come to him sporadically in the weeks after rescuing praxithea, some times for a day or two and others only long enough to see them both sated, short visits before he disappeared again for so long that lykaon began to wonder if he had finally died. but he returned, always, with a smile and a kiss and the story of some new scar.

and lykaon reveled in him because of course he did, because while he may not have known alexios enough to love him he  _did_ enjoy him and his company, his laughter, his touch. delphi was his home but alexios always brought something with him- a liveliness that no one in the chora possessed, the smell of sea salt and the ocean air- that spoke of far-off places, and lykaon always looked forward to him.

“no.” the word falls as if it weren’t he who said it. “no, alexios.”

but he couldn’t leave with him. he had his patients and his sister and his grandmother, people who depended on him, people he couldn’t abandon for a man he barely knew, a man he’d shared his bed with a handful of times and little else. he knew that alexios was a  _misthios,_ knew that he’d come from some tiny island, knew that his grandmother praxithea had ruined the man’s life.

he knew that he didn’t love him, not quite, not yet.

alexios’s face falls, disappointed for just a fraction of a second before it is gone again. he presses his hand flat against lykaon’s bare chest, fingers stroking lightly over his collarbone, with just enough pressure to to push him back against the bed. he leans close, nudges his nose against lykaon’s bearded jaw and bites a kiss into his throat, hard enough that lykaon sucks in a sharp breath and tangles his fingers tight into alexios’s hair.

“tell me, physician,” alexios’s says, and his voice is as playful and sultry as it was was when he plied lykaon with kisses, but it had the obvious veneer of a distraction, too, an attempt to save face. “do you have any treatments for a broken heart?”

lykaon bites his lip and chides himself for feeling guilty and pulls the mercenary into a bruising kiss rather than linger on that knot of ill-feeling wedged in his gut. against alexios’s mouth he murmurs, “you know, i think i may have just the thing.”


	2. born from grieving (lykaon)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> backstory time
> 
> note:  
> a woman named agnodice is credited as being the first woman physician in ancient greece (athens, to be precise) in the 4th century BCE, roughly a hundred years after the majority of odyssey takes place, though it's uncertain if she was even an actual historical person. regardless, when i refer to lykaon's mother as a "women's doctor", i mean that she was a midwife.

lykaon was nine years old when his parents died. 

he was nine years old, and his sister agave was eleven, and it was his father that became ill first. it hadn’t been alarming, in the beginning, just fever and soreness, and his father would complain and complain. but there was a smile on his face still, an unworried ease about him; there had still been hope, in those days. his mother, having been a women’s doctor with some knowledge of healing about her, had set herself to taking care of him like any good wife. and then she had gotten ill as well, and they had both died.

lykaon and agave, now orphaned, had been shuffled about from neighbor to neighbor in absence of other family- neither of his parents had any siblings of their own- until their grandmother left the sanctuary.

praxithea had never spoken much of her time as pythia, or why she had been dismissed from delphi. lykaon had never asked; it wasn’t his place. agave, more precocious and bold by half, had questioned anything and everything everything told to her and that had never sat well with praxithea, so the two women were often at odds for most of his childhood.

(”get a backbone, little brother,” agave had sneered at him once, “sheep will never stand up to wolves.”

“i’m no sheep,” he’d protested at the time, but agave had rolled her eyes at him and turned her back.)

he thinks now that perhaps he should have pressed praxithea for answers, as well, that perhaps he should not have been so passive.

he loved praxithea because she was his grandmother and she had raised him; as a child, she had coddled him and spoiled him. she had given him sweets and indulged his fancies, had taught him to read even though few others in the chora were lettered themselves. in her fine clothes and soft hands she had been othered and avoided even then but he hadn’t seen it, hadn’t  _wanted_ to see it as he had gotten older.

but he saw his grandmother clearly, now. regardless of what threats had been made against her, regardless of what group had had her in its nefarious grasp, she had still  _lied._ she had lied about hearing apollo’s prophecies- lives had been taken on those words, wars had been fought- and in doing so had marked herself as impious and wicked.

it was hard for him to think of her as a murderer, but at the same time he couldn’t consider her anything but.

praxithea’s remorse had rung false and manufactured; when she had told him of the crime she had seemed nearly blase about it, as if it were an offhand action rather than the highest form of blasphemy. she may have seen her actions justified because they kept her safe, but lykaon looked at her and could only see the countless lives she’d ruined in doing so. he’d pledged himself to helping people; he would be complicit in praxithea’s sin if he didn’t try to right it.

“please, don’t let my grandson kill me,” praxithea begged, and it’s the first time in a long time that she has sounded anything close to sincere. “this would break him.”

“you’re a healer, lykaon,” the  _misthios_ told him with dark, pitying eyes that spoke of regret, “not a killer.”

her death had rattled him regardless, for all that he had wanted to take it himself. it had been quick, almost kind; the knife was sharp and the wound it left was clean, slipped neatly between her ribs. there is still color in her cheeks when lykaon knees down beside her, her lifeblood seeping into the dirt.

it was red, like any other man’s; he’d almost expected her to bleed gold ichor, like the gods that had chosen to speak through her.

“it’s okay to hurt,” the  _misthios_ tells him, tone close to compassion, close to  _gentleness._ “she was your grandmother.”

“she was selfish and betrayed the oracle,” lykaon says, sniffing and scrubbing at tears he hadn’t realized were there until they dripped down his nose. “she brought this on herself. but yes, she was my grandmother.”


	3. this amid all the rest (lykaon/alexios)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> spoilers for the chapter 5 quest "and the streets run red"

the last time that he came to lykaon, alexios was a wreck.

his hair in disarray, dusty from travel- it was clear he’d come a long way and stopped little. he was splattered with mud, he smelled like the sea; but more than that there was a wild look to his face, something untamed and wrenching, a deep, deep pain.

lykaon had seen enough death to know that it was grief.

“oh, alexios,” is what he says when he opens the door, a sad little sigh, and he takes alexios in his arms right there in the doorway, drawing him inside. the other man goes without complaint, without resistance; he is silent in fact, as lykaon turns to close the door and guides him to one of the rickety wooden chairs seated near his table. 

“phoibe’s dead,” alexios rasps at last, still seeming very far away. lykaon kneels in front of him and goes to work on the buckles of his vambrace. “they  _killed_ her, lykaon.”

he did not know who phoibe was, or who  _they_ were meant to be, but lykaon presses a kiss to alexios’s knuckles regardless, lingering there.

“i couldn’t protect her.” alexios sucks in a rattling breath that sounds dangerously similar to a sob. “she was only a child.”

lykaon reaches up to take his face in his hands and alexios’s eyes focus, suddenly, on him, bright and glassy. lykaon strokes a thumb across his cheek, catching a tear there.”it’s not your fault, alexiskos. you can’t save everyone, all the time.”

alexios’s fingers loop loosely around lykaon’s wrists, not pushing or pulling, just resting. “i’m not a hero. i know that. but she was  _mine._ i should have--”

“you  _could_ have done many things, i think,” lykaon tells him, rising and pressing a kiss to his forehead before moving away. “but there’s no use wondering over  _what-ifs._ what’s done is done. we can only change what’s ahead of us; you taught me that, remember?”

“i’ll kill them all,” alexios says darkly as lykaon turns his back.

there are many things he wishes to respond with, but he holds his tongue. it had been alexios who had kept him from spilling praxithea’s blood, reasoning that blood only begot blood. and lykaon was grateful to him for that, because it’s true that killing praxithea would have broken something in him, but the hypocrisy stung regardless.

“undress.” there was a basin of fresh water on one of the tables pushed against the wall, set aside for later in the evening when lykaon had finished with his patients. “when was the last time you ate, fought? have you any wounds that need tending?”

alexios’s expression goes shifty which, while not the response that would have been best, was much preferred to the shattered sort of grief that had been there before. lykaon sighs and places the basin on the ground as he kneels; he turns himself back to work, undoing the buckles on alexios’s greaves, the man himself fumbling with the latches of his breastplate.

“this, too,” lykaon tells him once he is down to his chiton, dipping and wringing out the cloth he’d brought in the basin. he takes one of alexios’s legs, running the now-damp rag over his calf, wiping away dirt and dust.

“if you wanted me naked,” alexios said, “you could have just started out with that.”

lykaon knows a distraction when he sees one, knows when he is being  _used_ as a distraction, and merely hums as he continues his task. “perhaps the gods have sent me to you to teach you patience,  _misthios.”_

* * *

 

later, later, when the sun has dipped below the horizon and taken its golden rays with it, they will find themselves tangled together in lykaon’s bed, quiet and comfortable, loose-limbed. alexios’s head rests on lykaon’s chest, combing his fingers through the dark, curly hair there, and one of lykaon’s hands rest warmly on the back of alexios’s neck.

“lykaon,” alexios says suddenly, his fingers tightening. lykaon hums drowsily, not opening his eyes. “you know i would never let anything hurt you?”

“neither sparta nor athens have interest in delphi outside of the pythia,” he responds, slow, sleepy, “let alone the chora, and especially not some village doctor. i am quite safe here.”

alexios scoffs. “it is a war, no one is safe. but there are... others as well, not spartan or athenian.”

“are these  _others_ the same as the  _they_ who killed your phoibe?”

alexios goes very, very still, for long enough that lykaon nearly moves to see his face, but then he draws in a sharp, ragged breath. “yes.”

“who are they?”

“i can’t tell you.” alexios sounds reluctant about it. “i  _won’t_ tell you. i want to keep you safe.”

“i can’t be safe if i don’t know what is putting me in danger,” lykaon points out.

“the last person i involved,” alexios says, “was phoibe.”

that makes lykaon pause for a long while, absently carding his hand through alexios’s hair, thinking, listening to the sound of their breaths in the quiet and the chirp of insects outside. he asks, “are they the ones who used praxithea?”

immediately, alexios answers, “yes.” and then, “you don’t need to know more than that.”

“sometimes, dear alexios,” lykaon sighs, but doesn’t push forward, “i think you take the world on on your shoulders. you aren’t alone in everything, you know.”

there’s no response, not really, but alexios draws him into a kiss, almost bruising, fingers curled into his beard. lykaon lets himself be pressed back into the pillows as alexios rolls on top of him, and when he wakes in the morning to find himself alone and alexios’s things gone, he’s almost able to beat back that hollow, empty feeling of disappointment at being left behind again.


	4. water into the wine of yearning (thaletas/alexios)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> i cant believe thaletas broke up with me
> 
> historical notes:  
> the game calls thaletas a polemarch and then upgrades him to a general; i've kept his promotion to general, but instead of a polemarch i call him a captain. historically, polemarchs oversaw whole armies; they were the most senior military rank, and it wouldn't make sense within a historical context to refer to thaletas as a polemarch and then a general.

“you didn’t tell me,” thaletas says slowly, “that you were the grandson of leonidas.”

alexios  _feels_ his lip curl, his expression shutter; this was really the last conversation he wanted to be having, the last person he wanted to be talking to. he had cared about thaletas once, so many months ago, had thought that thaletas cared about him too, and what had that gotten him except for hurt and distraction? out of all the thousands of people in the city, it was thaletas that he met on accident; it must have been some sort of retribution from the gods.

“you never asked,” alexios points out. “it wasn’t important, anyway.”

he was spartan because that is where he was born, because it ran in his blood, but he had stopped being  _spartan_ when nikolaos dropped him from the cliffs of mount taygetos. he was a spartiate but he had not undergone the agoge, and he remembered more of kephallonia than he ever did of sparta. lakonia had not been his home for a long, long time.

thaletas’s expression pinches and he glances away, and alexios takes the time to truly look him over. and he looks  _good,_ his skin still browned and freckled from the sun, the barest hints of smile lines at the corners of his eyes. he was in full armor of course, as he usually was, his plumed helmet tucked under his arm, standing at parade rest. he’d been a captain when they’d first met but it seemed that his time on mykonos had done him some good, propelling him to a general’s prestige and shiny armor. it made something ache, deep inside.

he looks good, looks well, and alexios hates it.

“it makes one wonder what else you were hiding,” thaletas says, a frown tugging at his mouth, chin raising. alexios can feel the eyes on them, on their tense stances and unhappy faces, and hunches his shoulders slightly as he pulls his himation closer about himself; against his better judgement he takes thaletas by the arm and nudges him towards an alley.

“what makes you think you deserve my life story?” alexios demands, and though he’s angry in some vague, distant way, he’s mostly tired. he’d spent so long being hurt over thaletas and in face of all the other tragedy he’d faced in life, it wasn’t a heartbreak he’d allowed himself to hold on to. “kyra said it herself, i was just some  _misthios_ that you’d had your fun with.”

and thaletas has the gall to look hurt by that, like he hadn’t let alexios love him and then broke his heart. he licks his lips before he speaks, the barest flicker of tongue, and alexios hates that, too- hates that his eyes are immediately drawn to his mouth, hates that his heart stutters a beat and something goes tight in his chest.

“alexios,” thaletas says, sounding wounded, “you were always more than that, you  _know_ that.”

“do i?” is the immediate response.

because alexios didn’t  _know_ if he did. thaletas had said so many pretty things at the time, about fate and second chances; that night on the beach he’d lamented their diverging paths, his to sparta and alexios’s to his hunt. he’d smiled and spoken softly and alexios had never been in love before but he had been  _then,_ terribly and horribly in love with thaletas. and then he’d stayed to rebuild on mykonos, and had fallen back into kyra almost immediately.

but they were different people now, years removed. thaletas was more than a desperate, shipwrecked captain leading a dozen men to rebellion; alexios was no longer some nameless mercenary from some nameless, nowhere island. now thaletas was a general, and alexios a prince.

still though, alexios had loved him once and hoped he’d been loved in return, and its this thought, this sentimentality, that has him rocking forward to pull thaletas into one last, abrupt kiss. it is not gentle- they never have been, not really- and alexios holds thaletas’s face between both hands keeping him from moving, and pulls away when thaletas starts to lean into him.

“alexios,” thaletas breathes, his eyes fluttering open, nose bumping against alexios’s own; his eyelashes, alexios notes, are still the only feminine thing about him, long and thick and dark.

“the gods brought you back to me,” alexios says, and they hover there, quiet. he hurts again but it’s not as wrenching as the first time; it aches, deep and steady, like an old wound. “but not to keep.”

thaletas’s eyes are solemn, and up close alexios can catch gold flecks in his irises, thin rings of green around his pupils that melt into brown. he shifts his helmet to his other arm and brings a hand up to cup alexios’s cheek, tender; alexios doesn’t sink into the touch. “no,” thaletas agrees, perhaps a touch sadly, “we were never meant to be happy, were we?”

and alexios, irreverent alexios who once may have been as likely to obey the gods as spit at their feet, says, “the fates always had different destinies for us.”


	5. our grief bringing us home (alexios)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> new game+

the first time it had happened, the first time he had jerked himself awake with gasping breaths and cheeks wet with tears and found himself in his bed in his little house on kephallonia, alexios hadn’t put much thought to it.

the gods did that sometimes, granted random prophecy; it was there in the stories, tiresias and the pythia and priam’s poor, poor daughter. perhaps he had been given that, a brief glance, and his dreams had simply run away with the idea.

(attracting the attention of gods was a terrifying thought. alexios was nothing and no one, a mercenary, an unwanted child.)

but barnabas’s smile always felt too familiar, his laughter too warm; he sees how herodotus’s quiet sense of mystery slips at times to reveal a sort of wistful loneliness. alexios finds himself repeating, word for word, things he’d spoken in dreams. 

and then something would happen, always something terrible. a sword would catch him in the ribs and slide through the vulnerable leather of his armor like butter; some brute would trip him up and smash his head in against the ground with a mace; the  _adrestia_ would catch fire or be rammed to pieces and he would die in the sea, gasping for air and swallowing salt water. one memorable time he even caught ill in some port they visited or another, and he spent his last few hours fever-stricken and incoherent, crying the names of people he’d yet to meet.

afterwards he would wake up again, shaking and sweating, to phoibe’s laughter.

there were some things he did differently every time (let the family in kausos burn, but spare nikolaos) and some things he did the same (lykaon’s soft hands and mouth and eyes, the way thaletas bit bruises into his skin and broke his heart) and every time, every time he’d watch aspasia a bit too long, just enough to watch her squirm.

“you look so old, lamb,” myrrine said once, her eyes dark as she lightly touched his cheek, just the barest touch of fingertips. “older than you should.”

“life is not always kind,” he responded, leaning into the touch. myrrine was a constant, myrrine and the comfort she brought him left him feeling like a child again, just wanting to be held. “more often it has been cruel.”

“when did you become so wise?” her tone was teasing but there was a wistful sort of sadness, too, her thumb stroking across the soft skin below his eye.

alexios didn’t have an answer for that.

eventually though, eventually he gets it right, and something rattles loose in his chest when myrrine gathers him and deimos- kassandra, her name was kassandra- close to her, and she pets his hair and presses a kiss to his temple as the sobs shake through him. 

later he is reassured that it was all worth it, all the blood and pain and death, when kassandra flashes him a sharp smile; when nikolaos gives him that soft, proud look; when stentor grudgingly admits that he’s impressed after watching alexios spar with a handful of hoplites. he knows that it was worth it when phoibe shrieks with laughter and joy as he hauls her up and spins her in the air, and lykaon smiles at him and rests a hand lightly on his arm.

“welcome home,” lykaon murmurs when alexios leans in for a kiss, brief and chaste.

“and what a welcome,” alexios says back in the same quiet tone, because this was something just for him: this house in the chora, with lykaon and phoibe, and this quiet, quiet life that he’d earned several times over.


	6. the dedications i owe you (alexios/lykaon)

“you miss him,” praxithea accuses. “you pine like a little girl.”

the pestle in her hand is limp and she watches him, her eyes dark and sharp. she’d always been that way, sharp, for as long as he could remember; as a child it had meant that he could hide nothing from her, and even now, as a man grown, it took all of his will not to squirm under her gaze.

“who?” lykaon asks, feigning cluelessness, but the both of them know it’s a ruse.

“your misthios,” praxithea says to him, and returns to grinding the feverfew he’d given her to work with, feigning concentration. “the spartan.”

it was a mark of pettiness that she refused to use his name. even  _eagle bearer_ would have sufficed; it was difficult for lykaon to sort truth from fiction in the stories that were brought to the chora about alexios’s exploits, but the fact remained that he’d become known enough that people told stories of him in the first place, like some half-mythical demigod instead of a mortal man like all the rest.

(or perhaps he  _was_ chosen. he’d spoken little enough about his family when lykaon had known him, only that praxithea had ruined them all, and his grandmother only ever spoke of her prophecies in the vaguest of terms.)

“i have not seen alexios in nearly two years,” he reminds her, voice gentle, though it hurts to say his name.  _alexios._ “i’ll likely never see him again. there’s no use in pining.”

“oh, you worry yourself over him regardless,” praxithea scoffs. “don’t think i don’t see the way you sigh and moon when you think no one is watching. i raised you, dove; you’ve always been soft-hearted.”

and he was sure in some ways that he was a disappointment to her. praxithea was proud of agave for her stubborn outspokenness, he knew, even if they didn’t get along; she’d always doted on him for being soft-spoken and obedient, but she had scolded him for it just as often.

“if you weren’t pining,” she continues, “you would have settled down by now, married and begun a household of your own. you’re a handsome catch, boy, and it’s no secret that there is any number of women falling over themselves to be your wife.”

lykaon ducks his head at that, his face heating; he knew these things just as frankly as praxithea said them, but that didn’t change the fact that he didn’t  _want_ any of them. he didn’t know any of those women and none of them knew him- he was sure that they only wanted him for what he could provide (a decent house, comfortable living) or the inheritance he’d no doubt receive from praxithea (the temple still supported her, paid for her home and her food and her clothing)- and he’d turned each of them away with gentle words and apologetic smiles.

most were very young, anyway, girls barely on the cusp of womanhood no doubt pushed to action by their parents, and it wasn’t as if he’d ever paid much attention to anyone.

except alexios.

“i was unmarried before i met him,” lykaon says, “it only follows that i would remain unmarried after he left.”

he didn’t like admitting that praxithea was right, because she’d end up smug and insufferable and that was something that he couldn’t weather, not in this.  but it remained that she was indeed  _right,_ because he missed alexios like he’d never missed anything before, felt it like a physical ache.

lykaon had never been in love before, but he supposed that this must have been it. wasn’t it?

praxithea’s eyes are still on him, fixed with a sort of unwavering intensity, but then her expression softens a touch into the grandmother he’d known when he was a child, the grandmother that would scoop him up during thunderstorms and whisper stories to him as he cried in the dark. she lays her hand- soft, uncallused and unused to hard work- on his arm, and digs her fingers into his skin.

“lykaon,” she says, and  _oh,_ she rarely uses his name, “nothing good ever came from waiting and wishing. if you want something, you must  _take_ it.”


End file.
